SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

On Jan­u­ary 11, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, on a Truth So­cial post, wrote, “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MON­EY GO­ING TO CU­BA – ZE­RO!”

Since then, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has threat­ened tar­iffs on coun­tries that send any oil ship­ments to Cu­ba. As a re­sult, fu­el short­ages have caused se­vere black­outs on the Caribbean is­land.

Last week, Mex­i­co can­celled ship­ments of oil to Cu­ba. Al­so, last week, the Wall Street Jour­nal re­port­ed that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion was search­ing for Cuban gov­ern­ment in­sid­ers who could help cut a deal to push out the Com­mu­nist regime by the end of the year.

Cuban Pres­i­dent Miguel Di­az-Canel is stand­ing firm and said Cu­ba is set to roll out a plan to ad­dress fu­el short­ages as ear­ly as next week and that Cu­ba al­so has the “right” to re­ceive sea-bound de­liv­er­ies of fu­el.

Di­az-Canel de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “com­plex” as he called the US stance “ag­gres­sive and crim­i­nal”, say­ing it’s af­fect­ing things like trans­porta­tion, hos­pi­tals, schools, tourism and the pro­duc­tion of food.

But where will T&T’s loy­al­ties lie with the Caribbean isle?

Trinidad and To­ba­go will like­ly fol­low the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment’s lead when it comes to Cu­ba. This is the view of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Prof Andy Knight.

Knight, a for­mer di­rec­tor at the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, be­lieves US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump will not have to ex­ert pres­sure on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to end T&T’s re­la­tions with Cu­ba.

“The T&T Prime Min­is­ter seems in lock­step with Trump, and my sense is… that she would un­crit­i­cal­ly do what­ev­er the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion wants,” said Knight.

It seems that the US wants to ex­ert diplo­mat­ic pres­sure on St Lu­cia and oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean that have worked close­ly with Cu­ba, es­pe­cial­ly in med­ical ed­u­ca­tion,” he told Guardian Me­dia last week.

Knight’s com­ments fol­lowed re­cent state­ments made by St Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter Philip Pierre that the US ad­min­is­tra­tion in Wash­ing­ton had in­struct­ed his gov­ern­ment to stop send­ing stu­dents to Cu­ba to study med­i­cine.

Speak­ing at the Sec­ond World Con­gress on Racial and Eth­nic Health Dis­par­i­ties, Pierre said, “Many of our doc­tors got trained in Cu­ba, and now the great Unit­ed States has said we can’t do that any longer.”

On Mon­day, Pierre stood firm, stat­ing there were no plans to with­draw St Lu­cia med­ical stu­dents cur­rent­ly study­ing in Cu­ba.

The US, in a so­cial me­dia post on Wednes­day, in re­sponse to Pierre, stat­ed that it re­spect­ed the sov­er­eign de­ci­sions of coun­tries re­gard­ing the ed­u­ca­tion of their cit­i­zens and con­tin­ued to call for an end to what it de­scribed as ex­ploita­tion and forced labour linked to Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sions pro­gramme.

Mean­while, the T&T gov­ern­ment said it had re­ceived no such di­rec­tive from the US and con­firmed that the long-stand­ing prac­tice of send­ing na­tion­als to Cu­ba for med­ical train­ing re­mained un­changed.

Last Thurs­day, Cuban Am­bas­sador in T&T Gus­ta­vo Veliz steered clear of an­swer­ing ques­tions on the new de­vel­op­ment be­tween St Lu­cia and the USA and claims that Cu­ba’s mis­sions were forced labour.

“About St Lu­cia, I don’t know. You know we have an am­bas­sador in St Lu­cia. It’s a dif­fer­ent thing. Cu­ba is al­ways open to help Trinidad and To­ba­go... even in schol­ar­ships, med­ical doc­tors and nurs­es. We are friends of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We are friends in re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go. We main­tain this po­si­tion,” Veliz said.

US for­eign pol­i­cy a mess

Knight in­sist­ed that the US for­eign pol­i­cy was cur­rent­ly in a mess.

Hav­ing de­cap­i­tat­ed Venezuela, Knight said, the US has been sig­nalling Cu­ba may be next.

He said Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion was vi­o­lat­ing the norms of sov­er­eign­ty and non-in­ter­fer­ence in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of coun­tries.

“This has ex­tend­ed to coun­tries in the Caribbean re­gion that have had an ex­cel­lent re­la­tion­ship with Cu­ba in the past,” Knight said.

He said this may be part of a not-too-well-thought-out strat­e­gy to as­sert Amer­i­can pow­er in a re­gion which it con­sid­ered part of its sphere of in­flu­ence.

“I sus­pect that more sea­soned diplo­mats may have warned the US pres­i­dent that such a move amounts to a bul­ly­ing tac­tic, hence the walk­ing back on the ini­tial po­si­tion by de­clar­ing now that the US re­spects the sov­er­eign­ty of coun­tries when it comes to the ed­u­ca­tion of their cit­i­zens.”

He ar­gued there was no point in dis­rupt­ing med­ical ed­u­ca­tion and im­pact­ing the fu­ture health­care work­force.

“Cu­ba has a proven track record of help­ing Cari­com coun­tries de­vel­op a rel­a­tive­ly com­pe­tent health­care sec­tor.”

Knight said with re­spect to T&T, the US does not have to ex­ert pres­sure on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to end re­la­tions with Cu­ba.

“My main con­cern has to do with Cari­com uni­ty when it comes to deal­ing with Trump and the US Pres­i­dent’s at­tempt to dis­re­gard the rules-based or­der, which Amer­i­ca helped to cre­ate back in 1945. Cari­com coun­tries ought to project a for­eign pol­i­cy strat­e­gy of ac­tive non-align­ment and not give in to the Trumpian world­view.”

Knight said that Cari­com coun­tries should al­so do what is in their best in­ter­ests and not bend to Trump, who is like­ly us­ing tac­tics to di­vert at­ten­tion from the damn­ing in­for­ma­tion com­ing out of the Ep­stein files.

Long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with Cu­ba

Cu­ba and T&T have shared a long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship for over five decades, hav­ing es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions in 1972.

The strong ties be­tween the two coun­tries led to the sign­ing of an eco­nom­ic and tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion agree­ment in 2000.

In 2015, the Cham­ber of Com­merce of Cu­ba and T&T signed a bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion ac­cord to ex­change in­for­ma­tion on in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and the main prod­ucts on of­fer in their re­spec­tive mar­kets.

T&T sup­plies Cu­ba with en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy prod­ucts, such as an­hy­drous am­mo­nia, toi­let tis­sue, glass bot­tles and aer­at­ed wa­ter.

Cu­ba ex­ports chlo­rine, iron, con­tain­ers, cig­ars, rum, elec­tric wa­ter heaters and ve­hi­cle parts to T&T.

Last year, 11 schol­ar­ships were of­fered to stu­dents to study med­i­cine in Cu­ba, in a five-year pro­gramme.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion web­site stat­ed that open med­ical schol­ar­ships cost on av­er­age $600,000 per year.

Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Prof Prakash Per­sad told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day he had not sent any new med­ical stu­dents to Cu­ba this year, though he in­sist­ed the de­ci­sion was made in­de­pen­dent­ly.

“The schol­ar­ship was of­fered there, all right. They’ve been of­fer­ing every year, and this year we de­cid­ed to de­cline it, not be­cause of the US or any­body else, but be­cause of the con­di­tions there that the stu­dents face, be­cause we have to send food for them and a va­ri­ety of things,” he said.

Cuban Doc­tors for Cou­va Hos­pi­tal

Against this back­drop, the na­tion­al co­or­di­na­tor of the Cuban Med­ical Brigade in T&T, Dr Or­lan­do Lazaro Di­az Gomez, an­nounced last May that 44 Cuban doc­tors and 124 nurs­es were will­ing to work at the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

The $1.6 bil­lion hos­pi­tal was built in 2015 un­der Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first term in of­fice but was nev­er com­mis­sioned.

It was on­ly used as a step-down fa­cil­i­ty dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

In as­sum­ing her sec­ond term in gov­ern­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised that the hos­pi­tal would soon be­come op­er­a­tional.

Al­most ten months af­ter Di­az Gomez’s ap­peal for em­ploy­ment of the 168 Cuban med­ical work­ers, he has heard no word from the gov­ern­ment.

Stat­ing that such a process takes time, Di­az Gomez said he hoped for a pos­i­tive out­come.

“At present, we are wait­ing for that de­ci­sion,” he said.

Di­az Gomez de­clined to say how many of their med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers cur­rent­ly work in the five re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties.

Dur­ing Cu­ba and T&T’s 23 years of med­ical co­op­er­a­tion, 770 Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als se­cured jobs in T&T’s hos­pi­tals.

It was re­port­ed last year that eight Cuban doc­tors and 88 nurs­es pro­vid­ed their ser­vices in T&T.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion, Idi Stu­art, said T&T should al­ways be ap­pre­cia­tive of the ser­vices the Cuban doc­tors and nurs­es pro­vide to its health fa­cil­i­ties and Cari­com mem­bers.

“T&T is heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on spe­cial­ist doc­tors from Cu­ba, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the field of neu­ro­surgery,” Stu­art said.

In the last few months, he said, there has been a dwin­dling num­ber of Cuban doc­tors in the RHAs.

Stu­art said the pub­lic hos­pi­tals have a sur­plus of “gen­er­al trained doc­tors”, while there is a short­age of “spe­cial­ist trained doc­tors” and nurs­es.

In 2019, the then PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion hired 33 spe­cial­ist doc­tors from Cu­ba.

He said, how­ev­er, “I high­ly doubt the gov­ern­ment would have gone ahead to re­cruit doc­tors and nurs­es from Cu­ba in the face of what has been tak­ing place. We know our cur­rent gov­ern­ment is very pro to what the US stance is, so I hard­ly doubt they would go against the dic­tates of the US.”

Lead­ers push back against Caribbean crack­down

Last March, some Caribbean lead­ers pushed back against a US pol­i­cy aimed at crack­ing down on Cuban med­ical mis­sions, say­ing their work was es­sen­tial to their coun­tries.

Over­all, Cu­ba has some 24,180 doc­tors work­ing in 56 na­tions, boost­ing health care in many im­pov­er­ished coun­tries that lack med­ical ser­vices.

The tar­get­ing of Cuban med­ical mis­sions is not new for Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Dur­ing Trump’s first term in of­fice, he im­posed visa sanc­tions on Cu­ba’s glob­al med­i­cine pro­gramme.

His gov­ern­ment claimed these mis­sions amount­ed to “hu­man traf­fick­ing” be­cause Cuban doc­tors were re­port­ed­ly un­der­paid.

US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio al­so called the Cuban mis­sions forced labour, which he claimed Cu­ba had been prof­it­ing from.

Bar­ba­dos’s Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley de­scribed the US stance as “un­fair and un­jus­ti­fied”.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines’ then prime min­is­ter, Dr Ralph Gon­salves, made it clear he was will­ing to sac­ri­fice his US visa rather than aban­don the crit­i­cal Cuban med­ical mis­sion in his coun­try and dis­missed claims that his gov­ern­ment had been ex­ploit­ing Cuban doc­tors.

T&T’s then prime min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, al­so warned that the US’s in­ter­fer­ence in the Caribbean health care was un­ac­cept­able.

“Out of the blue now, we have been called hu­man traf­fick­ers be­cause we hire tech­ni­cal peo­ple who we pay top dol­lar,” Row­ley said, adding that he was pre­pared to lose his US visa.

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was the op­po­si­tion leader, said T&T’s pri­or­i­ty should be util­is­ing lo­cal health­care pro­fes­sion­als rather than en­gag­ing in a dis­pute with the US over its crack­down on Cuban med­ical labour.

“We should be putting our peo­ple first. Our first pri­or­i­ty should be cre­at­ing jobs for lo­cal med­ical per­son­nel be­cause we spend bil­lions in sub­si­dies, GATE and schol­ar­ships to ed­u­cate them,” she point­ed out.

Last Feb­ru­ary, Ru­bio an­nounced the ex­pan­sion of an ex­ist­ing Cu­ba-re­lat­ed visa re­stric­tion pol­i­cy that tar­get­ed forced labour linked to the Cuban labour ex­port pro­gramme.

This ex­pand­ed pol­i­cy ap­plied to cur­rent and for­mer Cuban gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and for­eign gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials whom the US be­lieved were re­spon­si­ble for or in­volved in Cuban labour.

Ru­bio al­so im­posed visa re­stric­tions on African, Cuban and Grena­di­an gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and their fam­i­ly mem­bers last Au­gust, stat­ing that this de­ci­sion was due to their com­plic­i­ty in the Cuban regime’s med­ical mis­sion scheme.

In a shock­ing move last month, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in­def­i­nite­ly sus­pend­ed im­mi­grant visa pro­cess­ing for peo­ple from 75 coun­tries, mark­ing one of its most ex­pan­sive ef­forts yet to re­strict le­gal path­ways to the Unit­ed States.

Cu­ba is one of those 75 coun­tries.

Cu­ba in Con­text

For sev­er­al years, Cu­ba, which has a pop­u­la­tion of al­most 11 mil­lion, has been en­dur­ing an eco­nom­ic cri­sis that has per­sis­tent­ly wors­ened over time.

Eco­nom­ic hur­dles, in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures, med­ica­tion and sup­ply scarci­ties, and grow­ing mi­gra­tion of health­care per­son­nel have strained the Cuban health­care sys­tem and col­lec­tive­ly im­pact­ed the pop­u­la­tion’s well-be­ing and health out­comes.

In 2003, the Cuban and T&T gov­ern­ments signed an agree­ment that paved the way for med­ical co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries.

Five years be­fore this agree­ment was signed, Patrick Man­ning, then op­po­si­tion leader, un­der­went surgery in Cu­ba to re­pair a leak­ing heart valve.

While serv­ing as prime min­is­ter, Man­ning re­turned to Cu­ba in 2004 to have a pace­mak­er im­plant­ed in the right side of his chest.

His third vis­it was in 2008, when he sought med­ical at­ten­tion to re­move a ma­lig­nant tu­mour in his left kid­ney.

Man­ning al­so had his med­ical check-up done there in 2011.

T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with Cu­ba was fur­ther so­lid­i­fied when Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) in­tro­duced week­ly flights to Ha­vana in 2018.

At the height of the pan­dem­ic, CAL ground­ed its flights and re­sumed ser­vice in 2021. To date, it still op­er­ates a ser­vice to Cu­ba.

T&T-based com­pa­nies such as Sacha Cos­met­ics, Carib Glass­works Ltd, An­gos­tu­ra Ltd, John Dick­son and Com­pa­ny Ltd, SM Jaleel and Com­pa­ny Ltd and Uni­ver­sal Foods have al­so set up busi­ness op­er­a­tions in Cu­ba.

Sta­tis­tics from the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try showed that be­tween 2010 and 2015, T&T ex­port­ed US$106.6 mil­lion in goods to Cu­ba.

The largest val­ue of ex­ports to Cu­ba was record­ed in 2016 at TT $455 mil­lion.

The items ex­port­ed to Cu­ba in­clud­ed an­hy­drous am­mo­nia, pre­served fruits, An­gos­tu­ra aro­mat­ic bit­ters, bunker “C” grade fu­el oil, diesel, toi­let pa­per, fa­cial tis­sue and processed foods.

Cu­ba ex­port­ed US$24.3 mil­lion worth of goods to T&T over those six years.

Items such as am­mo­nia, cig­ars, wines, meats, and processed foods were list­ed on the min­istry’s web­site.

Tense US-Cu­ba re­la­tion­ship

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the US and Cu­ba has been plagued by dis­trust and an­tag­o­nism since 1959, the year Fi­del Cas­tro over­threw a US-backed regime in Ha­vana and es­tab­lished a so­cial­ist state al­lied with the So­vi­et Union.

Since 1960, the US has main­tained a trade em­bar­go against Cu­ba, which in­cludes re­stric­tions on all com­mer­cial, eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty, mak­ing it il­le­gal for US cor­po­ra­tions to do busi­ness with Cu­ba.

As a tourist des­ti­na­tion, Cu­ba’s ma­jor nat­ur­al re­sources in­clude nick­el, oil, cobalt and nat­ur­al gas.

Time­line

1953 – Fi­del Cas­tro leads a rev­o­lu­tion in Cu­ba, over­throw­ing Pres­i­dent Ful­gen­cio Batista, who had been sup­port­ed by the US Gov­ern­ment for his an­ti-com­mu­nist stance. Cas­tro de­vel­ops ties with the So­vi­et Union.

1961 – The CIA be­gins to make moves to as­sas­si­nate Cas­tro.

1959-62 Pres­i­dent John F Kennedy es­tab­lish­es the Cuban refugee pro­gramme in 1961, lead­ing to al­most 250,000 Cubans flee­ing to the US.

1962 – The US im­pos­es an eco­nom­ic em­bar­go on Cu­ba, whose econ­o­my de­pend­ed on trade with the US.

1977 – Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter reach­es an agree­ment with Cas­tro to re­sume diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions, al­low­ing of­fi­cials from the two coun­tries to com­mu­ni­cate reg­u­lar­ly.

1979 – The US des­ig­nates Cu­ba as a state spon­sor of ter­ror­ism.

1992 – Pres­i­dent George Bush signs the Cuban Democ­ra­cy Act, which in­creas­es US eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on Cu­ba.

1996 – The US trade em­bar­go is made per­ma­nent af­ter Cu­ba shoots down two US air­craft.

2000 – Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez signs an agree­ment with Fi­del Cas­tro al­low­ing Venezuela to send oil to Cu­ba.

2009 – Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma eas­es re­stric­tions on trav­el and re­mit­tances.

2015 – Oba­ma an­nounces the US will re­store full diplo­mat­ic ties with Cu­ba. The US al­so re­moves Cu­ba from its list of state spon­sors of ter­ror­ism.

2017 – Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounces he will re­in­state re­stric­tions on Amer­i­cans trav­el­ling to Cu­ba.

2021 – The US re­turns Cu­ba to its list of state spon­sors of ter­ror­ism.

2022 – The White House lifts some re­stric­tions.

2023 – Pres­i­dent Joe Biden de­ports 100 Cubans in the first de­por­ta­tion flight to the is­land.

2025 – Trump signs a pres­i­den­tial mem­o­ran­dum im­pos­ing tighter re­stric­tions on Cu­ba.

2026 – Fol­low­ing the US cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, Trump sig­nals that Cu­ba is go­ing to fall on its own vo­li­tion.